Delyte's Blog

Lil Wayne Lyrics Causes Complaints

Emmett Till’s Family Disgusted and Disappointed with Lil Wayne

'The Ku Klux Klan would be very proud of Lil Wayne.' Lil Wayne must have been out of his mind, or someone in that studio is flat out ignorant.

After Future’s track “Karate Chop” featuring Wayne leaked the other day, only outrage poured out among the masses for his careless lyric degrading the legacy and legend of Emmett Till.

The family of the slain 14 year old responded to the controversy.

“It was a heinous murder,” Gordon-Taylor said in a phone interview with the Associated Press. “He was brutally beaten and tortured, and he was shot, wrapped in barbed wire and tossed in the Tallahatchie River. The images that we’re fortunate to have (of his open casket) that ‘Jet’ published, they demonstrate the ugliness of racism. So to compare a woman’s anatomy — the gateway of life — to the ugly face of death, it just destroyed me. And then I had to call the elders in my family and explain to them before they heard it from some another source.”

Gordon-Taylor, founding director of the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation, said Lil Wayne’s lyric was devastating to her family. Simeon Wright, Till’s cousin who shared a bed with his relative the night he was taken by the killers, heard the lyric for the first time Wednesday night.

“And he said the Ku Klux Klan would be very proud of Lil Wayne,” Gordon-Taylor said. “And as tough a man as he is, I could see the hurt and the anger in his eyes. It just demonstrates to our family just how lost are our youth.”

The song was leaked over the weekend and left Epic Records scrambling to make an apology, explaining that the track was an unauthorized remix and will not be in the official version.